Polaroid X530

Polaroid X530 first world review

Polaroid x530 is the second digital camera - after Sigma, with SD9 & SD10 models - where is mounted X3 Foveon multilayer photodiodes sensor. Soon, in this page, will appear a x530 review. You can see here, the first pictures, taken at various ASA values and compressions, where you can immediately detect the peculiar details sharpness produced by this revolutionay chip. See hereunder a full review.

The pupae are growing (20 days since laying eggs)...click to get the Tiff file. Later a detailed story on this sturdy Italian wasp, here on guard mode (real dimension 2 cm or 3/4 of 1").

Sanyo J1 has a very speedier focusing system than Polaroid x530, because the focusing beam is more coxial with the lens barrell. Hereunder, a cut-off from an original flashed picture: I had choosen to focus on the small pupa, inside the cell, at the bottom of the nest.

The second wasp picture was taken with flash on, but I had to muffle it with a thick cotton band. In macro mode the flash always burns out the subject. In portrait mode the overexposure comes out if you do not to choose the proper light metering setting (multiple/center/spot)..

Polarid x530 Review

I'm sure I won't go too far away saying that this camera - made in China, well built, sturdy (as the wasp) and with a nice grip - has got a Ferrari engine inside it; if light conditions are ideal, no camera - in its range of price, or more - can be near to rival the details of Foveon X3 chip.

Having said this, I will have to list some handicaps, and I will begin with the minor ones.

Getting out the SD card with your fingers is difficult: once I had to use tweezers to extract it. The battery lasts some two hours of intensive use; I suggest therefore to include in the package a separate charger in order to have a second battery ready.

The lens cap hasn't got a firm grip on the lens barrel to which is attached by a nylon wire, so it falls always down with a minimal pressure: the result is that you have this cumbersome piece of plastic disturbing you while taking pictures. The cap could be useful only when you put the camera in your knapsack, even if the lens are already protected by hardwared camera iris cap. I would also prefer having, beside the neck strap, a small strap; this camera is not a heavy reflex, therefore can be hand hold without fatigue for some time.

The camera does not memorize the LCD diplay brightness, so everytime you turn the camera on you have to readjust it, because the display it is not so bright in the default centered value. The possibility to give more light to the diplay should be hardwared near the display or the wasp you are aiming at - 2 cm far from from the lens, and 15 from your nose - will have already blown up your face with painful punctures while you look for the menus to give maximum light to the display; moreover the display gets hot with long usage, not so hot to burn your fingers, but this is a sympthom that the camera will begin to fail to focus with any mode: portrait, landscape, sport or auto. I had to extract the battery and reset it while taking pictures of soccer amateurs which I will post later on.

The camera often seems uncertain in focusing; in Sport mode for example you won't get the scene you had pointed to, as the camera will linger on focusing. It seems to be not a "point and shoot camera" as you have to ponder before doing it: am I in the right mode? Have I choosen the right light metering setting?(and you have to do some fingering to get it): see, for example, the model picture, out of focus with Auto focusing on: using a Sanyo J1, if you are on Auto focus, a portrait will result in focus. Moreover the manual focus is so sluggish that you prefer not to use it.

The flash always burns out, in macro mode, all the subjects, even if you give a minus 2 value exposure: for shooting the second flash aided wasp picture I had to muffle it with a thick cotton band. In macro mode you need a lot of depth which you can have only if you can intervene on lens aperture, feature which was not conceived for this camera, but much needed as the camera, most times, chooses to shoot at full aperture, even if this wouln't be the case; say in a portrait chooses 2,7 and 1/800th; moreover the ASA speed lacks the 50 value, which would increase the already fabulous details sharpness. I would also add a hotspot in order to utilize a more powerful external flash, justified by the possibility to print large prints because of the "generous" 25 Mbytes Tiff(Tagged Image File Format) dimension.

Movie: I would have expected to find a 640x480 30fps; instead you find the speediest frame only on the 320x240 mode. The real point, anyway, is not even this one, but the quality of the movie. Even if is more saturated, more detailed and more "natural" than the Sanyo J1 camera movie, (see the two compared shootings) it looks like as you see the scene through a mesh. Foveon X3 chip, if the theory is right, should rival not only cameras of which I am sure (if well assited by other camera components) but even 3CCD professional videocamera: so I do not understand why there is this problem. Also in a 400 ASA shot a certain amount of green pixels or speckles appeared in a dark area; this problem was suggested by Ron Parr.

Many times - I had it for only one week - I had to get out the battery as the camera went bust after choosing a series of modes in a quick pace. Many times the pictures have been overexposed, as, if you don't choose the correct Light metering setting (multiple/center/spot) it's enough to aim a little bit out of range mode - say for example in the spot mode - to have the picture overexposed; seems that the three modes are very strict in defining the relevant areas: on this theme I will post a couple of example. I would have had more of them, but the files are so large - as I said before - more than 6MB in X3F resolution, which when converted in Tiff would become a whopping 25MB; so while viewing the files with Polaroid Photolab - you can't view the X3F picture resolution with other program, except the other 4 jpg compression modes - I was deleting the out of focus and the overexposed to spare disk space in my almost saturated computer.

Anyway, I firmly believe in this new Foveon technology and I must say that I had the pleasure to test it. In the end, a picture so detailed as the sunflower or the dog or the wasp (in this case, in the focused area) are unbeateable. The consumer should not be deterred (when all issues will be solved) by the mere 1,5 real pixels camera: first because they are 1,5 real pixels , second because the correspondent file Tiff is, I repeat again, a huge 29Mb or more.

This was the only camera sample available in Italy (the other two x530, are being tested, in France and Germany), so we will wait and see if the issues appeared in the camera I had, will surface on the other samples. For certain, a praise goes to Polaroid (WWL Italia is the retailer for Italy) which has choosen to mount this chip on this camera. One wonders: why Kodak hasn't done it before, or other minor, but very well known camera makers? The idea is winning; needs to be refined.

Bali is a very brave model, but I had AUTO focusing on, and not Portrait mode, so the photo is out of focus (not shaken) and I lost a nice picture. The point is that Sanyo J1, in autofocus mode, renders portraits in focus.

Click on the picture to download the 3,4 Mb file, clik here to download Tiff sunflower picture (25,9 MB)

Polaroid x530 body

Two big compared movies 640x480 15fps: Polaroid x530 versus Sanyo J1 (about 30MB each). Before shooting, the two cameras had been mounted side by side on a wooden board, in order to point at the same scene.

Here a series of two pictures at various ASA speed(100/200/400); click inside each picture to get the original 1420x1060.

Wasp's story

On may 2005 a wasp decided that a corner of my balcony most suited her for building her nest. The first time I saw the umbrella shaped nursery, I just watched inside the esagonal cells, and when I discovered the insect’s eggs, I cut the masterpiece and threw it in the garbage.

Next day the wasp was hovering over the black spot indicating the detroyed nest foundations; after a while, still puzzled, she handgripped to the wall and pondered with her long wawing antennas what was going on. My presence there as a “neutral” observator didn’t spur her brain to make the right connections.

It happened to me to see the same wasp next day, busy in building again her future home; I let her finish it and when, four days later, she laid down the next series of eggs, I cut the umbrella again. I was curious to see – making an hazardous comparison with humans - if she had the same attidute as the Italians, in coping with difficulties and, when is the case, to surmount them at full speed; in the end she too is a tipical Italian wasp, as the Italian bees, for example, most renowned for their mild behaviour and high volume honey production.

Well, when she found for the second time her work vanished she again gripped to the wall and she passed a whole two days there – except for searching food and beverages – and I was almost sure she had definitively given up to the compelling nature’s duty.

I was wrong; for the third time she began to work again on the same spot, only a couple of cm away from the two aborted nests. Of course I was so attracted by her determination that I postponed the fatal decision. Then arrived the Polaroid x530 sample and I immediately saw a very easy opportunity to test the camera macro mode without sherlockholming around.

   There was a problem though. The wasp after so many failures was very wary of any external approach; the first time I neared her nest she opened her wings signalling she was going to attack me.

   So, in order not to be inflated by her punctures I thought to establish a contact with her; an almost alien one. I reasoned, that being so hot – still now we have 35 degrees Celsius – she was also suffering the heat, so for 4-5 day I offered her, with a long and thin stick, food and beverages.

   She let me understand, via a series of denials and approvals, that she appreciated most micro chunks of Feta, the tasty Greek cheese; as for drinks she decidely opted for Sicilian orange fresh juice. Later, when I first aimed at the nest with the x530, she began to roam in circles over the nest platform for a while until she settled, in guard mode, behind the building.

   Since then we respect each other and the pupae inside are growing at an alarming pace. The point is: will she deliver to her kids the information that I’m no more dangerous or will I have to be prepared for a massive attack?

Polaroid x530 versus Canon Eos 300D

   This test is not significant due to a slack cooperation given by the owner of the Canon digital camera; my idea is, that the buyers of more costly and renowned brands, cannot even bear the idea that this David Camera - when using reasonable compared weighed pictures, the right light, and no technical problems, for example focusing - can be more detailed than Golia's ones . In fact, I had told him to shoot with his camera the same subject at 1600x1200 - 100, 200, 400 ASA - in order to compare them with mine at 1408x1056 resolution. He instead shooted at 3072x2048, regardless of ASA.
   So because of this wrong approach and the resulting hastiness, only three pictures were left to be compared, two of them, from both cameras, resulted to have focusing or shaking problems (bark and bearded man), while the landscape picture was well made by Canon, compared to the out of focus of Polaroid x530 one.
   I would add here, that Polaroid user's handbook, advises to shoot, for normal picture, at 1408x1056 resolution; this is the case if you want a 7x10cm print, because if you use a whole 18x24cm paper, you will get a jagged picture. On the contrary the tiff file (~25 MB) on the big paper format, produces astounding prints. Hereunder the three pictures - all 950 pixels wide - in the Polaroid-Canon sequence. If in the future I will get another x530 sample, I will republish a better sequence.

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